On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, radical leftism would appear to be growing in popularity. In America, self-described socialist Bernie Sanders looks primed to wreck Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first female President. In Britain, the squirrelly-featured Marxist (and virulent anti-Zionist) Jeremy Corbyn looks set to become the next leader of the Labour Party, a movement that had until recently been planted firmly in the ideological centre. In Spain, the far-left Party ‘Podemos’ – founded in 2014 – has risen to become the second largest party in the country. France meanwhile is falling into a political sinkhole as the industrial establishment holds the economy hostage using the socialist government as its guarantor. And in Greece, although an exceptional case subject to exceptional forces, the populist Syriza movement has already pushed out the mainstream with a speed and emphasis shocking to commentators across the continent.

How on Earth could this be happening? Europe has not been in a more sickly condition since the Second World War, and the virus afflicting it can be easily identified (even by the most blockheaded everyman) as decidedly Left-wing in origin. Poor economic growth, pathetically short working weeks, incontinent welfare spending, over-unionised labour, governmental bloating, reckless borrowing, budget deficits, idealistic immigration policies, Islamist penetration… Which of these toxins was ever recommended in a right-wing manifesto? None of them were, and yet the right-wing is pushed further into the shade with each passing day. Has the continent lost its mind?

Of all the plausible explanations for this folie à plusieurs, the most convincing to me is that a feeling of exhausted morbidity has struck the European psyche, overpowering and disabling its rational faculties – a ‘death wish’ if you prefer, a longing for nothingness, for all this business and trauma to be resolved, as quickly as possible, with whatever consequences an early settlement will have for the long-term future of our civilisation.

Westerners are tired. Our rulers have become unresponsive to our agonies and we no longer trust them to act in our interests. Our elites treat us with nothing but contempt, viewing our problems as completely separate to their own private destinies.

In this world of torment, Leftism offers a soothing slide into narcotic bliss and short-term paradise. With a far-left government, our quality of life will (for a while) skyrocket to levels we never dreamt of. The poor will be given borrowed money, as will the struggling Middle Classes. The Muslims will be kept at bay with a foreign policy of unconditional surrender. We will be able to use air and public transport without fear of terrorism, for there will be no reason to attack us. Our soldiers will all be brought home and the money spent on their equipment will be redirected into free childcare. The doomly scenarios of climate change will be prevented by the installation of a forest of wind-turbines. Every child will be allowed to go to university free of charge. And so on…

The dream will last until the creditors stop lending. And then, for those still around, the nightmares will begin.

I understand the appeal Leftism can have to a miserable country, just as I understand the appeal diacetylmorphine can have to a miserable person. In both cases, it is never the right option, and in both cases, those who choose wrongly end up regretting it.

On last night’s edition of BBC Question Time (a long-running British political discussion show), the panel was asked to discuss counter-radicalisation efforts in British schools. This then prompted a young woman in the audience to describe the policies already in effect at her college.

At her place of study, the girl reported, library computers automatically turn off when a student clicks on a website including the words ‘ISIS’, ‘Jihad’, ‘Islamism’ and similar terms. She added that this is also the case when the website in question is unaffiliated with Islam, such as the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and, presumably, this blog.

The host of the programme David Dimbleby reacted by calling the measure ‘extraordinary’… To that I would add the terms ‘counterproductive’ and ‘illogical’.

The very last thing we need is for a generation of British students to spend their (psychologically) formative years in the shade of political ignorance. Since it is fair to guess that the fallout from Islamisation will be the chief concern to these youngsters in the future, it is surely preferable that they be forewarned from as early an age as possible.

Indeed, ignorance of Islam, as well as being a failure of duty on the part of British educators, will also risk creating more Islam.

As Muslims increase as a percentage of Britain’s youth population, non-Muslim students will increasingly find themselves (especially in inner-city areas) in shared learning environments with believers. If the non-believers in this situation are never taught the downsides of Islam, the institutions will quickly lose their diversity entirely and become simply Muslim. After all, how can young White and non-Muslim BME kids be expected to resist aggressive conversion if even our roughest criminals in prison cannot?

That isn’t a risk worth taking in my opinion. Children should be given as much information about Jihadism as they are given about HIV and Gonorrhoea.

As to counter-radicalisation in general, I don’t believe any effort by government will be successful. Since the ministers charged with overseeing a multi-cultural society will never speak frankly about the deficiencies of one particular part of it, no measure getting to the root of the issue will ever be attempted.

Islamist terrorism is not the result of a misunderstanding of Islam, but of an unusuallyprofoundunderstandingof it. How can this be legislated against without legislating against Islam itself?

Like most people in the UK, I have a contradictory relationship with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). On the one hand, I disagree entirely with its ideology and standpoint. On the other, I visit the news site every day and believe it to be (on most issues) the most well-presented, and reliable news service in the country.

This strange situation, of trusting and yet despising the same organization, is difficult to justify. How can a news source be accurate and reliable, and yet also ideological and opinionated?

The explanation, I think, involves the difference between the BBC’s coverage of strictly European matters and those matters which affect the Islamic world.

Normally, when addressing the banal developments in Westminster, the BBC has a Left-leaning bias, but this is nothing so extreme that it can change a government or – in most cases – even the opinion of an ordinary citizen. Where this bias matters more, and where we should hold it to greater account, is when it effects events far away.

We shouldn’t forget that the BBC is not just the main News source for the UK. It is also one of the most popular news sources in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. While it might seem harmlessly centrist to us, carefully crafted techniques of misdirection and manipulation can have devastating consequences elsewhere in the world.

Take the issue of the BBC’s coverage of Jihadi groups in the Middle East. Today (Saturday- 07/27/2013), the top story on BBC Mobile News reports on the violent events in Egypt with the headline ‘Egypt military kills ‘dozens’ at rally’. Alongside the headline there is a photograph of a screaming woman kneeling by a corpse. If one reads the article in full, we learn the body to be of one of many Muslim Brotherhood militants who were killed after instigating violence. This qualifying factor however is included in a single sentence right at the end of the text.

For those who do not read the whole report (which requires loading a separate page), the headline “Egypt Military Kills dozens at rally’ together with that highly cynical choice of photo, aligns with a pro-Brotherhood interpretation of the event. Without investing time to find out otherwise, casual observers will go away thinking that the military is massacring people for the sake of it (and there is no evidence for that contention whatsoever).

This is, in many ways, the signature style of BBC deception. The BBC doesn’t actually lie (it would be discovered very quickly if it did that), but it does gloss the truth in its own subtle propaganda. It doesn’t lie, it misdirects.

Before the troubles in Egypt erupted, the BBC was employing the same trick on the Syrian conflict.

The Syrian civil war between the totalitarianism of Bashar al-Assad and the Free Syrian Army (which includes the al-Nusra Front terrorist organization) is rightly reported as the biggest humanitarian disaster active in the world today. When this bloodbath reaches a resolution, it will not be around a negotiating table, but after one side has been decisively wiped out. One hundred thousand people may have already been killed since the conflict began.

As part of the global response to this, International organizations have (correctly) taken a cautious position. They distribute the blame for the conflict evenly between the government and the terrorists, accusing al-Nusra of bomb attacks against civilians, government buildings, and religious minorities (especially Christians and Shia Muslims), as well as condemning the Assad government of military overreaction, cruelty and imprecision.

For those of us who are wary of both dictatorship and Islamism, picking a side in this conflict has been difficult for us too. For me though, such difficulty disappears when we read about the behavior of the Islamists. Assad’s forces may have committed massacres in their time, but rarely do they cut out the hearts of their victims and consume them on camera. Nor – to my knowledge – have they amassed a reputation for feeding the bodies of slaughtered Christians to wild dogs.

Despite all this grisly detail, if you follow the Syrian civil war on the BBC, you might well believe the heart-eating maniacs of Al-Nusra to be the modern-day equivalents of the Résistance Francaise.

Time after time, the BBC has over-reported government retaliations against Al-Nusra terrorism without mentioning (or only mentioning as a footnote) the acts of terrorism that were being responded to. They have also treated us on a daily basis to stomach churning images of dead children, bloodied faces and ripped apart bodies; but only those ripped apart by government bombs. I have yet to see a single report with pictures of the victims of Syrian ‘rebels’.

Who knows how many Syrian, Egyptian and Libyan men have seen images of regime crimes on the BBC news channel and turned to Jihad as a result?

Of course, when a rebel atrocity is large enough, the BBC do (begrudgingly) cover it. But only way-down its ranking of news and almost always without photographs, despite the aftermath of such crimes being easy to access given the individual regime’s keenness for them to be reported.

We are not being Alex Jones-style paranoiacs to wonder what is going on here. There is a very clear and very definite pattern emerging. Since the Arab spring began, the BBC has promoted Islamist movements in Somalia, Libya, Egypt and Syria, often at the expense of liberal-democratic and secular opposition. The question must therefore be asked: Why is the BBC backing the Islamist takeover of the Middle East and North Africa – and furthermore, is this even legal? There are after-all laws in place in Britain which forbid the promotion, justification, or glamorisation of terrorism. Why doesn’t this qualify?